Why is NODE_ENV=beta an error?

Nikita Galkin — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 03:52:08 +0000

The third factor of The Twelve Factors App says: Store config in the environment. NODE_ENV is an example of following this factor. The variable name says that it defines the environment for Node.js, not your application. It's common practice to prefix environment variables. For example, AWS SDK configures by AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY.

Examples of how the behavior of the JavaScript ecosystem changes with NODE_ENV=production:

npm install command will not install devDepencencies
express.js caches templates and css
Apollo Server disables schema introspection

You should not use NODE_ENV to determine the name of your environment. But which env var to use instead of NODE_ENV? The answer depends on whether you will use a prefix for business logic-related variables. You can think about these variables as feature flags.

Example with prefix FOO:

FOO_ENV=beta
FOO_FEATURE_FLAG=on

Example without prefix:

ENV=beta
FEATURE_FLAG=on

Let's get back to NODE_ENV. Usually, it has one of these values:

development – used if not defined explicitly. Set this value during development at your computer.
test – test frameworks like Jest automatically set this value.
production – use this value during run code at the server

The tenth factor is Dev/prod parity. Therefore, it right approach to use NODE_ENV=production in every business environment. Dockerfile is the simplest place for doing this. Just add

ENV NODE_ENV=production

Summary

Use NODE_ENV with development|test|production
Define your ENV to determine your environment
In Dockerfile add ENV NODE_ENV=production

crypto.randomUUID is three times faster uuid.v4

Nikita Galkin — Wed, 19 May 2021 00:36:30 +0000

Node.js v14.17 release added crypto.randomUUID(). This method allows to generate random RFC 4122 Version 4 UUID strings. Example:

const { randomUUID } = require('crypto');

console.log(randomUUID());
// '43c98ac2-8493-49b0-95d8-de843d90e6ca'

I wondered how big the difference between uuid generation by Node.js API and uuid package.

For benchmarking I prefer to use hyperfine. It is like apache benchmark, but for CLI commands. There are have two cases:

require('crypto').randomUUID()
require('uuid').v4()

Let's put them into two files:

// test-native.js
const { randomUUID } = require('crypto');

for (let i = 0; i < 10_000_000; i++) {
  randomUUID();
}

// test-uuid.js
const { v4 } = require('uuid');

for (let i = 0; i < 10_000_000; i++) {
  v4();
}

Now we ready for benchmarking:
hyperfine 'node test-native.js' 'node test-uuid.js'

This command shows that native generation is three times faster than uuid package. Awesome!

Forem: Nikita Galkin

Why is NODE_ENV=beta an error?

Summary

crypto.randomUUID is three times faster uuid.v4